Cyberattacks on European supermarkets show why firms must plan to run offline
A recent hack that pushed Swedish supermarket freezers to about 55 C and a warning that a breach could cut Ahold Delhaize sales by up to €250 million highlight how businesses need tested fallback procedures, not just stronger defenses.
A string of cyberattacks on European retailers has made clear that the central question for business leaders is no longer whether an intrusion will happen, but whether their operations can keep running when systems go dark. Recent attacks on supermarket refrigeration pushed some freezers in Sweden to about 55 degrees Celsius, spoiling stock and forcing stores to rethink how they serve customers.
The stakes are large. Ahold Delhaize has warned that a hack could cut up to €250 million in sales. As a precaution, the company shut some websites and apps, which halted online orders. It took about a week to restore online shopping in Belgium after the incident was disclosed. The company's experience illustrates how quickly a security incident can move from an IT problem to a revenue problem.
Other cases point in the same direction. Marks & Spencer halted online clothing orders for 46 days after a breach in April 2025. Maersk, the shipping company, handled about 80 percent of its volume manually after the 2017 NotPetya attack. Crypto exchange Binance suffered a $6.3 billion theft, which was cited as part of a wider spree of attacks. Each case shows that the operational damage can last far longer than the intrusion itself.
The supermarket attacks trace back to controls supplied by Danfoss, which were targeted in an earlier hack that disrupted French supermarket refrigeration, leading to spoiled food and fires. The company urged customers to update their software. Weeks later, hackers struck Danfoss-controlled retailers again, this time in Sweden and Ireland. Carrefour's rapid patching reportedly limited the impact on its Belgian stores, a difference that underscores how much timely action matters.
The threat itself is also changing quickly. The author argues that the change in the past six months exceeds the change of the previous six years. Anthropic's Mythos Preview scored about 83 percent on a cyber benchmark, up from 67 percent previously, and the company reports thousands of serious flaws across major operating systems and browsers. OpenAI has released GPT-6 Cyber to vetted customers, aimed at finding flaws. The UK's National Cyber Security Centre says the time between disclosure of a vulnerability and its exploitation has shrunk to days.
Against that backdrop, the article contends that boards should audit how their businesses would survive an intrusion, not only whether one could occur. One penetration test firm hired by a board tested defenses but not recovery, a gap the article presents as a common blind spot. The recommended response is to protect the most critical operations first and to drill manual fallback procedures. Suggested steps include keeping offline order lists, paper logs and backup communication channels ready to use.
A key uncertainty remains: how long each business can keep serving customers while its systems are down. Answering that question, the article suggests, is the most useful step a company can take before the next attack arrives.
Source: fastcompany.com
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